Zap! Pow! Biff!

When I was a kid, the comic book heroines I liked best tended to be those with physical powers. The Scarlet Witch, the Wasp, the Invisible Girl, they were all cool--but they were basically the point-and-zap sort of hero. The Black Widow could fight, and later in her career you got to see more of it, but early on she seemed to make more use of her "widow's bite", which made her a point-and-zapper. Which is fine, but somehow didn't capture my imagination the way that the fighters did. I don't have, still frozen in my mind, the sorts of images of them that I have of the hands-on heroines.

You know how, if you've been reading comics since you were a kid, there are certain images that just stay with you for years?

I remember Ms. Marvel, whose entire all-too-brief original comic run is out on the porch right now.

I remember Mantis. Not exactly a feminist icon, but she certainly had some great moves.

I remember Tigra, following a villain to his lair by jumping onto the base of his helicopter and riding it all the way there.

I remember the Black Cat (apparently I picked up a Spider-Man at some point?) jumping (falling?) from a telephone wire while carrying a grown man and landing easily on the ground.

That doesn't mean that I didn't appreciate the other superheroines, but when I think back to the comics I read as a girl, the actual images that have stayed with me are, almost all of them, images of fighting. Not magic, not energy blasts, not Kicking, punching, that sort of thing.

I'm not sure why this is. It certainly didn't lead me to pursue any sort of martial art myself, so I don't think I particularly related to the physical abilities. But for some reason, those are the images of superheroines from my youth that come to mind--the ones that (usually) don't involve the use of powers, or at least not the use of distance powers. Maybe they seemed stronger? Maybe they seemed more subversive--more surprising? Maybe more based in reality? Maybe there's just something more viscerally satisfying about a punch to the jaw than there is about a lightning blast?

Of course, I've always been more interested in heroes of either gender who aren't too powerful. Batman, not Superman. Captain America, not the Hulk. Never cared for Thor. I did like Iron Man, but then he was always pretty vulnerable under the armor. (He isn't anymore, what with Extremis. Maybe that's why my interest in his title has lagged?) I generally prefer the earth-bound storylines to the cosmic ones, the street-level heroes to the starfarers.

So the fact that it's those superheroines who engage in physical combat that appealed most to me as a girl may just be an extension of that preference. However, the images of male superheroes that stick in my mind do often involve powers--things like Quicksilver in motion, Cyclops with the eye blasts, and so forth.

For some reason, to me, the most iconic superheroine actions have to do with physical combat.

I'm not really sure what that says about me. :)